Robert Musil: "Attempts to Find Another Human Being": May 2013

Friday, May 31, 2013

Studia Austriaca

I have just had an essay published in Studia Austriaca, called "Musil's 'On Stupidity' and the Artistic and Ethical Uses of the Feminine Discursive"...and you can find it by clicking on the link below.

http://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/StudiaAustriaca/article/view/3023/3209

Read it and weep as much as you like, even if you are a man. Weeping is very salutary in the Spring.

Yours,

Genese

Attempts to Find Another Human Being

Around 1923 Musil planned to publish a collection of his essays under the title, "Versuche einen anderen Menschen zu finden" (Attempts to Find Another Human Being). In his notebooks he wrote:

"In fact, this could be the title for everything that I have ever written. I can think of no other excuse for spending one's whole life at a writing desk to become a beggar. [...] I can only imagine another duty with great difficulty. I have always been a writer, always pursued writing.
It has come to pass in my life that people have scolded me for it and have called me a sick human being, an intellectual, an unmoral human being, a scientist, in short, everything that I am not, and only with resistance, under the pressure of a few, people have become accustomed to thinking of me as what I believe myself to be, and want to be: a writer."